Future Tension: Protection versus Convenience

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Recently, I was asked to write about future technologies for a PC Magazine article. The obvious thing to do would be extrapolate current trends in semiconductor chips and see what kinds of cool technologies we’d have in our office, our cars, our pockets. Which is what I did.It was easy and fun. Crystal ball gazing, for all its perils, is always entertaining to write.

But as I look wrote may optimistic forecast, I found myself becoming a little worried and little enthralled at the same time. As tech becomes more convenient and easy to use, we’ll be demanding easier access to our own data, wherever we happen to be. Web-based applications like Flickr, Facebook, and online data storage sites only hint at the coming hunger for easy access to our own personal content.

At the other end of the Internet cloud—our PCs, our mobile phones, our home theater systems—connectivity is no longer a convenience, but a must. I’m sure I speak for most technology writers and editors when I say that doing my job would be impossible if I were unable to connect to the Internet.

So in the future, we’ll happily upload our photos, videos, and personal information to the big cloud in the Internet sky. Microsoft suggests that maybe our medical data should reside there, too, and the case for convenient access to medical information is pretty strong. Lives can be saved, and illnesses averted if medical pros can get to your information, no matter where you happen to be.

The worry comes in because of privacy concerns. It’s obvious why we’d be nervous about our medical data residing in the cloud. It’s less obvious, but still true, that the very act of connecting to the Internet means surrendering some degree of privacy. As I was watching Congress investigate the big telecomm players about warrantless surveillance, I found it stunning how easy it is for those in power to gain access to our telecomm history, whether it’s cell phone calls or web browsing.

But I’m also enthralled. The possibility of ubiquitous sharing of our personal lives, as evidenced by the Facebooks and MySpaces in the cloud, might result in the citizens of this planet earth understanding each other just a little better. Maybe we’d actually co-operate on a global scale to help alleviate global warming, energy issues or other pressing matters.

Already, sites like World Without Oil is trying to tap into the collective intelligence made possible by the human web that results from the world wide web in order to help solve one pressing issue.

As portable Internet devices become more prevalent in affluent countries, and very low cost, connected computers become common in the developing world, increasing possibilities exist for cooperation and collaboration than ever before.

Imaging you have not only ubiquitous access to the Internet, and not only easy access to your own personal content on your home server. Content is passé. It’s what you do with that content in the future that counts. Sharing your content on YouTube is chump change compared to being able to work with the collective intelligence of a large community to solve something real.

The tradeoff is no longer one of simple privacy versus convenience. These days, the risks include increased scrutiny and exposure of our own information to governments, criminal elements and people trying to sell you stuff. Your digital life, wherever it might be stored, will be visible to more people than ever before. The rewards are perhaps less obvious, but may be more profound than we can imagine today.

What it will likely take is the next generation of users. While those of us who are current users certainly benefit from the connected world of tomorrow, people that grow up with it, and know no other world, will be the ones to actually effect change. And I believe those changes will be more profound than we can imagine today.

So there it is: a world where privacy becomes nearly impossible, but where ideas can be more easily shared and solutions to some of the big problems we face today be worked on in a way that the word “democracy” can only begin to hint at.

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